~ politics for the people

Half of Londoners in poverty are in employment – so much for ‘Making Work Pay’

The top 10% of households in London own just over half the city’s wealth, while the bottom 50% own 5% [Image: Dominic Lipinski/PA].

London is the richest city in Europe. This information demonstrates that Tory claims of “Making Work Pay” were never anything other than a lie.

Tories never intended to make work pay.

Their plan was always to push wages down, and push the poor into these continually lower-paying jobs by turning the benefit system into a living hell – and a death sentence for many including the sick and those with disabilities.

Now you know.

More than half of the 2.3 million Londoners living in poverty are members of households in which someone is earning money, research has found.

The overall poverty rate in London has fallen slightly from 29% to 27% over the past six years, because of rising employment levels, but having a job is not enough to protect a huge number of residents from financial hardship.

According to a study by the Trust for London, 58% of Londoners who are in poverty are living in a working family, the highest this figure has ever been. The proportion is up from 44% a decade ago and 28% two decades ago.

Having lived in London fr a time it wasn’t only the cost of accommodation but generally everything was more expensive to buy, and even though it has an excellent public transport system it soon stacks up for the travel costs.

This graph shows how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. when we look back to the last war, a Labour government transformed the consensus to a mixed economy nationalising industries and creating the welfare state. During that period working people (who were not aware of it at that time) experienced unheard of growth in their living standards. Then in 1970 along came Neo-Liberalism when the political system became captured by corporate power and influence, and those gains came to a halt.